Section Four: The Method of Psychology
BThe Method of the Treatment of Material
[48] It seems hardly possible to separate the method of treatment of the material of psychology from the method of acquiring it. Now, were it the case that concepts were already made available in observation with which to classify the psychological object, and were a distinct experimental design already to correspond to the distinctly scientific posing of a question, then the beginning of a âtreatmentâ would seem to be already given just with these. But actually, instead, the entire classification by concepts allows itself, almost without difficulty, to be distinguished from the âmaking availableâ of concepts, and the acquisition of the experimental results to be distinguished from their processing; our further survey concerning the method of psychology will show that it is expedient to address particular consideration to the treatment of the material.
IThe Idea of a Merely âDescriptiveâ Psychology
In one case, however, every fundamental would escape this distinction. This would be the case, were psychology required to âdescribeâ what is readily available, without mediation. This idea of a âdescribingâ or âdescriptive psychologyâ has, in various forms, until the most recent time,6 found its adherents: These approximate more or less to the first extensive justification we have of this standpoint, given by Wilhelm Dilthey. Diltheyâs justification is thus best for evaluating the standing of this method.
Explanatory psychology, Dilthey claims, gives itself the task corresponding to âexplanationâ in the natural sciences, âto subordinate [the phenomena of its realm] to a vast all-embracing causal coherence by means of a limited number of unambiguously determined elements.â Psychology can only reach this, its goal, if it transfers onto mental life the way of forming hypotheses characteristic of the natural sciences, through which a causal coherence is supplementarily added to what is given. Psychology is not, however, entitled to make this transfer.
So, psychology is âspellbound in a fog of hypothesesââfor example, its teaching of the parallelism between the nervous operations and the mental operationsâfor which âthe possibility for testing them against the mental [psychischen] facts is in no way apparentâ (Dilthey 1894, p. 1309). In the inner-world, the living nexus was given, rather, in consciousness, and did not need to be introduced only subsequently through hypotheses as is the case with the physical phenomena. Psychology, on this model, has only the inner facts to describe and to analyze, and the gaps to fill in.
IIDescribing and Explaining
To gainsay the psychologists opposed to this model, H. Ebbinghaus, in particular, lent words. âExplanatory psychology,â he says, âdoes not only somehow explain and construct [49] out of merely hypothetical assumptions, but rather, the vast majority of its adherents in the past, and the entirety of its independent adherents in the present, employ it to first prepare the resources for its explanations through the most careful study of what is given. It thus practices for a long time precisely the procedure that Dilthey holds as advisableâ (Ebbinghaus 1896, p. 195).
Mere description could simply not be the task of a science. Descriptive psychology itself does not even content itself with the mere describing, analyzing, and generalizing of what is given, but rather, it recognizes that âwhat is givenâ features gaping holes, which our thinking urgently demands we fill. In filling these holes, however, it proceeds exactly as explanatory psychology.
This instructive back and forth of the two opposing standpoints sufficiently designates the weakness of a psychology that wants to only âdescribeâ. We further complete what has been said through reference to the nature of the âdescribingâ.
What happens while we describe that âsensory worldâ? We designate the mental processes with words, which are, however, themselves taken from the psychological language. We speak of âsensationsâ, âideasâ7 [Vorstellungen], âfeelingsâ, âdrivesâ, and with these [words] we subordinate the relevant processes under certain psychological concepts.
We can then either content ourselves with the vague popular word meaning, which confuses, for example, sensation and feeling, or we can strive for scientific clarity and exactness. We will probably prefer the latter.
Then, however, we stand already in the realm of âexplanatory psychologyâ, to whose main task such an exact classification belongs, and which, through the disclosure of the causal nexus, itself first makes possible complete classification.
IIIThe Inevitable Deduction from Innate Capabilities
In addition, there is a further point. Especially for the âmost exactâ psychologists, those psychological concepts are collective names for the reactions to stimuli of psychophysical organisms. While such a psychologist speaks in this way about sensation, attention, pitch memory, weariness, etc., with these he makes his own the inevitable explanation of innate capabilities, which cannot be avoided in the whole organic world. He thereby lapses hopelessly into a standpoint which concerningly evokes the old âpsychology of facultiesâ.8
In fact, this way of explanation is in no way to be avoided. We can do nothing other than presume such dispositions, whose unfolding in the interplay with the outer world first makes mental life possible. Psychology has, until now, neglected these concepts all-too much, and we will try, in a later segment, to make up for this omission.
Here, our task is only to indicate that the use of such concepts in modern psychology only differentiates it from the old âpsychology of facultiesâ through the fact that it builds onto the established knowledge with critical diligence the realization that, within certain boundaries, an examination through experiments is possible and thatâthis is the most important pointâthe main principle holds: to reduce, if possible, the number of hypotheses. Every psychological collective name has the tendency to the designation of a âfacultyâ, or to become an innate capability, since, as a process in a psychophysical organism, it points to its overall conditions of living.
The important thing is to simplify, if possible, the explanatory process based on it, i.e., to reduce to a minimum the application of those concepts of innate capabilities. There can be no talk of the complete elimination of the sameâfor this the fight between Locke and Leibniz about innate ideas, discussed earlier, is a telling example. [50]
IVThe General Method in the Treatment of the Material
Psychology, thus, can go no other way in the treatment of its material than can science in general. Our desire for understanding is satisfied whenever it is permitted us to ascertain the spatial and temporal characteristics of an object, to classify it in a system of clear and distinct concepts, and to survey completely its causal relationships to other objects.
Spatial characteristics come into consideration in psychology only for the bodily organs and processes, which stand in relation to the mental. So the task of psychology is fulfilled whenever it is permitted to investigate the temporal relationships of the mental operations, to apprehend the individual components of the mental life in clear and distinct concepts, to make clear their development and causal relationships, and, in the context of this knowledge, to learn to understand the mental life as a coherent whole.